


The Worn Out Dancing Shoes

by HallowedBeThyAssButt



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Angst, Comfort, Crimes & Criminals, Falling In Love, Family Drama, Friendship/Love, Love, M/M, Murder, Murder Mystery, Mystery, Teen John, Teen Romance, Teen Sherlock, Teenagers, balletlock, rugbyjohn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-26
Updated: 2017-02-25
Packaged: 2018-09-26 23:17:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9928340
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HallowedBeThyAssButt/pseuds/HallowedBeThyAssButt
Summary: Rugby!John/Ballet!Lock High school AU.Sherlock finds himself struggling to cope with more than one set of difficult emotions as he tries to deal with teenage life while answering those seemingly unsolvable questions: Why can he never spot fast enough on a pose turn? Why does he end up with a black eye or bruised rib at least once a month? What's so special about the new blond kid all the girls are fawning over? And why on god's green earth do the boys at the school keep disappearing?





	

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! Thanks for stopping by! This is the first fanfic I've written in well over ten years, so I might be a little rusty. I'd love to know what you think? Enjoy x

“Sherlock, for god's sake!” John stomped after the boy across the pitch, already ankle deep in mud. The rain thundered from the stormy sky and met the ground with enthusiasm, battering John on the way and leaving him soaked to the skin. He ran a mud-splattered hand over his drenched face, and squelched his way towards the other boy.

“Sherlock! I know you can hear me perfectly well! Wait up!” He broke into a rather broken jog, trying to keep his balance as he gained on the brunet, finally catching up. He reached out and grabbed Sherlock's arm, and the latter stopped, sinking several inches in the mud as he did so. He did not turn to look at John. 

John waited in silence for him to turn, the rain drilling holes in the mud around them. Sighing, he dragged his feet from the mud, and stepped around in front of the younger boy. “Sherlock...”

Sherlock would not look up. The anger and the misery blazed in his posture, in his tight fists, in the quiver of his lip that John could identify at a single glance. “...You left your dancing shoes.” John pressed the dishevelled pair of flimsy slippers into he boy's pale hand, prising his fist open as gently as possible. Sherlock's fingers contracted on the slippers for a moment, and then he looked up. His features carried the misery and the fury that had built up over this whole messy ordeal, and John's heart lurched for him. 

“I don't care,” Sherlock muttered. John saw his lips move, but the low mumble was drowned by the rain. 

“What?”

Sherlock sighed, and his eyes flickered. His body was tense, held perfectly still and poised, from years of training and control. It concerned John that this was Sherlock's way of dealing with the situation. 

“I DON'T FUCKING CARE!” Sherlock's features twisted with venom, and he hurled the slippers as far as he could across the rugby pitch. They landed lightly in the mud, and were soaked in seconds. “What's the point?” Sherlock's words were aimed at John, though his glowering gaze was fixed on the slowly drowning slippers. “Nobody believes me, John. They think I'm a joke!” 

John's hands itched to reach out, to comfort the other boy, to do something, /anything/, but instead he merely stared helplessly, hating himself a little more every second he let roll by without /doing something/. “Sherlock...”

Sherlock's head snapped up to look at the blond, and his eyes were wet, not only from the rain. He scrubbed at them briefly. “I could have helped him. I could have saved him. But they won't listen. They'll never listen. Why would they? Why would they listen to the freak?!”

John winced at the word, and his hand automatically came back to Sherlock's arm. “You /know/ you're not a freak,” he insisted fiercely. His other hand came up to Sherlock's other arm, and both squeezed reassuringly. Sherlock hardly seemed to notice. “You're a genius, you're smarter than all of those bastards put together. If they can't see that...” He huffed, a singular drop of water trickling down past his eye and making him wince. “Then that's their loss, Sherlock.”

The younger boy seemed to be trying to form words round a lump in his throat. He looked slightly sick. “What's the point in any of it?” he murmured, his words no longer aimed at John, his gaze falling from John's face, wandering aimlessly down the blond's muddy kit. “They won't take me seriously, everyone in the school thinks... even in bloody /dance/...” He ran a hand up over his unruly curls, and most of them stayed up out of his face. 

“I don't care what they think,” John told him. Sherlock didn't react. “Listen to me!” He lifted the boy's chin with a curled finger. “I know you. I know you are /brilliant/, and /astonishing/, and you /will/ get to the bottom of this...”

The brunet didn't respond, other than to shiver furiously as the wind sped into them. Thunder rumbled ominously overhead. Shrugging off his battered rugby jacket, John wrapped it round the thin boy's shoulders, in a feeble attempt to keep the wind at bay. 

“I don't know why you trust me,” Sherlock muttered. “I could have got you killed, or arrested, or... god, anything.” He shook his head in disgust. 

John heaved a furious huff, and brushed his lingering hand up round the boy's defined jaw. His skin was icy and wet. Sherlock still couldn't see it. He used to have so much faith in his own abilities...  
The brunet lifted his gaze, pale and indescribable eyes meeting with deepest, endless blue. John shivered again, but not because of the weather. Stepping closer, and wrapping his free arm somewhat awkwardly around Sherlock's figure, he leaned closer, all logical thought left behind somewhere in the changing rooms. He brushed his lips to the dancer's, and found them cold, clammy, but enormously inviting. The kiss was brief, but it was enough. “I believe in you, Sherlock Holmes,” he murmured against those lips. 

John felt, rather than saw, the shiver run through the boy, and a twitch of a smile promised to appear on his lips. But the brunet pulled back, and, though his cheeks flushed, his jaw was, once again, determined. “Then you are a fool, John Watson,” he mumbled, gaze falling away. He pulled his feet from the mud, stepping round the blond and away across the pitch, towards the hole in the hedging. 

John did not follow. 

Gazing up at the threatening sky, squinting through the rain, he found himself repeating the same advice he always gave to Harry. /Count to ten. You'll be more rational at ten. Get to ten./  
John got to ten. Then twenty. Fifty. A hundred. He looked down, not bothering to wipe the rain from his face. Sherlock's words echoed to him... /what's the point?/

He glanced over to the ruined dancing shoes, and slowly turned, squelching through the mud to pick them up. Squinting through the rain, he found himself alone. He huffed.  
“A fool,” he muttered to himself, before turning, and traipsing back towards the school.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading, please leave a comment if you feel so inclined :)


End file.
